Bad things are bad for you. As are good things.

It’s all bad news this week, I’m afraid. Literally. Not only does it look bad and sound bad, but it also has bad effects on you. It’s all-round baaaaaaaaad. First of all — and you’re not going to be hugely surprised by this — the Daily Mail thinks that a leisure activity engaged in by millions of people every day is dangerous. To wit: watching television makes you fat. But what is breathtakingly shocking (or, more accurately, mildly distracting) is the reason why. Apparently, watching bad news on television makes you increase your food intake by a whopping 40%.

It’s just as well that websites like the Daily Mail focus solely on reporting good news. I mean, just today the site led with the following three glowingly optimistic pieces:

Of course, being scientists, they corroborated their theory with data. In all, they conducted three small-scale studies. In the first, they watched a group of volunteers to see how many M&Ms they ate when sitting near posters containing words like “struggle” and “adversity” (I know you probably think I’m being satirical, but I’m afraid that was the method). Such negative framing led volunteers to eat an average of 19 M&Ms instead of 14. From this, the Daily Mail somehow concluded that “[TV] viewers increase food intake by 40% when bombarded by gloomy bulletins”.

The other two studies involved questions about food — rather than actual, you know, food. And none of the studies involved television.

I don’t know, but I think the Daily Mail’s line on this research might be a little tenuous.

This all reminds me of the time the Daily Mail warned us that sitting down is more dangerous than smoking. (I imagine that chairs are now banned from the Daily Mail offices. And anyone who even accidentally allows their backside to touch a radiator has to undergo rehabilitation.)

But to be on the safe side, what would the solution to all of this be? Well obviously, keep away from bad things. Bad things are bad for you.